


The Study Break

by mcgarrygirl78



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Drama, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:50:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/938007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcgarrygirl78/pseuds/mcgarrygirl78
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are they flirting?” Alex leaned and whispered to James, who was watching them go back and forth as if it were Wimbledon.  “Are they flirting over the rise of the Roman Empire?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Study Break

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not calling this an AU…how do we know it didn’t happen this way. I got this idea after jailbaitjareau and ssaalexblake got into a conversation on Tumblr about baby Alex and baby Erin in the Academy. Their vision was more femslash but I've never really seen those two in that way.

** AUGUST, 1985 **

Alex Blake turned the page and scribbled in her notebook. She stopped, reread, and then used a blue highlighter to color a passage. She was barely paying attention to the door of her room; her back was to it. The cadet across the hall, the curly redhead one, was playing 70s Rod Stewart in her room. Alex had been blocking it out for over an hour now but the lyrics to the songs were running through her mind just like the words of the book she read. If she ended up putting anything on her test about thinking anyone or anything was sexy there would be hell to pay.

“I think it’s time for a break.”

“You always think it’s time for a break.” Alex didn’t look up from her book.

“No, I just think it’s time for a break now.”

“There's a lot of information I need to absorb for these tests. Computers are the wave of the future…in 20 years everything we need to know will be on a floppy disk.”

“In 20 years the Soviets could’ve all blown us all to kingdom come, Alex. What good will the information do us if we’re dead?”

“Who called you names today? Who tried to make your life miserable?” Alex kept her sigh to herself as she put her spiral notebook in her page and closed the book. She turned to look at the beautiful blonde who was standing in the doorway.

“No one.” Erin Strauss shook her head. “I don’t just want to blow off steam when some jerk calls me names.”

“Every time you ask me to go out and get plastered with you the source of it is some douchebag here who overstepped his bounds. The amount of douchebags here astounds me.”

“Fine, I’ll just go alone.”

“You're not drinking alone.” Alex stood up from her chair.

“I don’t need a babysitter Alex. I'm not an afterschool special waiting to happen.”

“I know, I just…Erin c'mon.”

“OK, I had a bad day.” She came and sat down on Alex’s bed. There were some brochures from different colleges. It seemed as if her friend was serious about going to get her PhD after Academy graduation. 

Erin slowly leafed through one for MIT. “I just want to forget about it. One hour, maybe two off this damn base. Some mediocre music, good drinks, and we’ll come straight back. I won't keep you out past midnight, I swear. Wouldn’t want you to turn into a pumpkin.” Erin smiled.

“You're a horrible influence, you know. People don’t see that in you immediately. They see the ambitious, strong blonde with the perky breasts, winning smile, and correct answer for everything. Underneath that lurks a really bad girl.”

“You think my breasts are perky.” Erin cupped her breasts.

“Everyone thinks your breasts are perky.” Alex rolled her eyes. “Do you notice the looks you get in those Academy shirts?”

“Do you have names? Don’t tell me about them if they're ugly.”

“Shut up and go get dressed.” The brunette laughed. “If I have to wait longer than a half hour, I'm going to change my mind.”

“You'll go with me?” Erin jumped off the bed, suddenly giddy again. “It’s gonna be fun, Alex, I promise. You can study anytime.”

“Not really, since this test is day after tomorrow. I’ll be OK.”

“I love you.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“You say it to all the girls.”

Erin laughed, blew Alex a kiss, and rushed out of the room. Alex sat back in her chair and sighed. She’d never had a best friend before. She wasn’t sure if Erin Strauss would be the death of her or not. She wasn’t sure if Erin Strauss was even her best friend. 

It wasn’t hard to be friends with Erin. She was beautiful, brilliant, strong, and snarky. She loved being the best and brightest. She did everything bigger and better than everyone else. That was both good and bad. Erin didn’t have to try as hard as some of the other cadets to excel. 

That made her a target to be taken down a peg or two. Alex had her back; they’d ripped many cadets to verbal pieces during their first three months in the Academy. They just fit together well, two square pegs in a room full of circles. But that didn’t mean they had much in common. Erin had led a charmed life of day schools and the Ivy League. 

Alex was from a middle class family that wanted many things for her but couldn’t always provide. They were both smart but Alex was a bookworm while Erin just seemed to absorb information like a sponge. Erin was also beating the male cadets, and some instructors, off with a stick. Alex was more of an observer. She let people’s language, verbal, written, and body, speak for them. 

“Are you guys going out drinking tonight?” Redhead Girl stuck her head in Alex’s door. “I can let you borrow something of mine.”

“We’re just going out to eat.” Alex lied. 

She got up, closing the door. She knew she had to change clothes. This was the part Alex hated. It wasn’t that Erin wanted her to be someone else. It’s that Alex felt like she had to be sometimes. She didn’t want too many people looking but hated for it seem as if she was trying to go unnoticed. The line she walked was fine…made from razor wire. There was a long way to fall if Alex didn’t keep her balance.

***

“He's only been in the Bureau for seven years but he's brilliant.” Erin sipped her martini. “Everyone thinks he’s brilliant; Kirk thinks he's brilliant. I think he might want him to mentor me and make my transition smoother. He's really going places.”

“I thought SSA Douglas was going to mentor you.” Alex drank her light beer. 

Petey’s was hopping tonight…it was always hopping. Most of the female cadets and soldiers called it Creepy’s, for the obvious reasons. Between male cadets, agents, and soldiers, the place was crawling with men trying to separate girls from panties at the speed of light. They’d been there for about 20 minutes and had already told a handful of them no thanks. Instead Erin and Alex enjoyed their drinks and bopped their heads to the music pumping out of the speakers. At least it wasn’t so loud tonight that Alex couldn’t hear herself think.

“Kirk’s really busy, Alex. He's going to run this entire thing one day. I'm telling you, he's just that amazing.”

“If Kirk is amazing, how do you feel about Jason Gideon?”

“Oh c'mon, don’t talk about it like that. I mean I guess it’s hard not to be attracted, in a certain way, to a man who’s brilliant. Banter is like foreplay and you cannot banter with a dumbass.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

They tapped glasses and Alex laughed.

“Excuse me, we don’t mean to bother you…”

“Too late.” Erin looked the guy up and down.

“Be nice.” Alex told her friend though she wasn’t in the mood for bad flirting either.

“This place is just packed tonight and we swear we don’t want to throw any bad pickup lines at you but my friend was hoping we could sit with you in your booth. He has a broken ankle and shouldn’t be on his feet too long.”

“How’d you do that?” Erin asked.

“Funny story really,” the guy smiled. “See, I was drinking and…”

“If you promise not to finish then you can sit.” Alex said.

“Blake…”

“Let it be our good deed for the day.” Alex slid over. “C'mon, sit down.”

“This will be our good deed for the week.” Erin mumbled.

The two guys smiled, with Broken Ankle sitting next to Erin and Serious but Cute Face sitting next to Alex.

“Is your name Blake?” Serious asked.

“Alex, Alex Blake.”

“That’s like fate or something.” Broken ankle grinned. “It couldn’t be anything but. Of all the women in this place…”

“What do you mean?” Erin asked. She didn’t want to talk to them but they looked better than some of the other guys stalking the bar tonight. And the broken ankle thing was a good pickup. An A for effort on that.

“I'm James Blake.” He held out his hand for Alex to shake. “Nice to meet you.”

“Wow, small world. This is Erin.”

“Hi.” Erin shook his hand.

“This is Mark Cramer.”

“Are you guys soldiers from the base?” Erin asked.

“No ma'am.” He shook his head. “Do you like a man in uniform?”

“Not really.” She replied. Alex smirked and James laughed.

“Please don’t mind him. Flirting is his default position. He keeps telling me we’re in the best years of our lives and should live it up.”

“You don’t understand the work I have to do to drag this guy out for one measly beer.” Broken Ankle pointed at the guy with Alex’s last name.

“I have a lot of studying to do.” James said.

“What are you studying?” Alex asked.

“I'm a second year resident at GW. I hardly have time to sleep, much less enjoy a night out.”

“You're here tonight.” Erin said.

“I was promised fulfilling conversations with amazing people.” James said. “I didn’t believe that when I walked in the door. I'm changing my mind now.”

“7.5.” Erin clapped. “Maybe an 8 for the sincere face.”

“I’d give it an 8.” Alex nodded.

“Why are you…?”

“They're judging your pickup line, genius.” Mark laughed. “I’d give it a solid 8.5 but then again I get rejected a lot.”

“Do I want to know why?”

“I'm not the hit and run type. I know, I know, it sounds like a line but it’s true. I want to meet a good woman, who likes a drink and a laugh and a roll in the hay on rainy Sunday mornings. I want to be challenged and sometimes I even want to lose. I want to be turned on by her turn ons, you know. I want a relationship. Since things didn’t work out with Farrah Fawcett I'm back on the market.”

“Poor Farrah.” Erin shook her head. “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone. That’s what my daddy always told me.”

“Where are you ladies from?” James asked.

“We’re cadets at the FBI Academy.” Alex replied.

“Oh, I figured that out. I meant where in the world are you from?”

“You first.” She finished her martini and Broken Ankle smiled at her. He had a nice smile.

“The second round is on us.” He said, flagging a barmaid.

“This is me not arguing in any way.”

“I'm from Dayton, Ohio.” James said. “Mark is from Warwick, Rhode Island.”

“Kansas City, Missouri.” Alex raised her hand. “Sometimes I miss the laidback nature of home. Everything on the East Coast is so hustle bustle. I liked the peace and quiet.”

“Where are you from?”

Broken Ankle, who she now knew as Mark, smiled as he looked at Erin. He put in their drink order with a passing server. The place was packed tonight. It was going to be tough to even get tipsy at this rate. She and Alex got a table though. That was the equivalent of the Holy Grail.

“Manhattan.” She replied.

“My mother was born and raised on the Upper East Side.” He said. “She went to the Spence School.”

“I wasn’t, and I didn’t.”

“Ahh, I see.”

There was no point in talking to someone who wasn’t interested. They hadn’t sat down to chat up women in the first place, no matter how attractive they were. The blonde was gorgeous. Mark never liked to think of anyone as out of his league but if there was a woman who was, it was her. 

To the naked eye she looked like another fresh perm in tight designer jeans, a silk button up, and high heels. He saw far beyond the naked eye. Her countenance exuded old money, at least older money. What she was doing as an FBI cadet he had no idea. The odds of her ever telling him were low.

“Keep your schedule open for next Thursday.” Mark turned the conversation back to his best friend. “I got you on the list for a dinner the RNC is having. Free, food, free drink, and connections. It’ll be good for you.”

“I probably have to work.” James said.

“Just get someone to cover for you. You're going to have plenty of time in your life to be a doctor, Jim. But those clean cut good looks and brains will only get you so far in this town. The rest is connections, connections, connections. I had to bust my ass to get you on the list.”

“You're such a politician.” James rolled his eyes. He laughed, grabbing two beers from the server’s tray. He handed the Coors Light to Alex. She smiled as she thanked him.

“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Mark said.

“No, that one time I assured you that your hair wasn’t going prematurely gray was the nicest thing I ever said to you. Remember?”

“You don’t think it is, do you?” he ran his hand over his sandy blonde hair.

“I told you that it wasn’t, Mark. I wasn’t being a douche about it. I was being truthful.”

“So you're in politics?” Erin asked.

“I am,” he nodded. “Kind of.”

“You can elaborate at any time.”

“I'm from a political family. My father is a long time Rhode Island State Senator and my mother’s family rose to prominence in law and the New York State Supreme Court. Currently I'm the Deputy Chief of Staff for the Senior Senator from Rhode Island.”

“You're a Rhode Island Republican.” She said. “That’s a small but fascinating breed.”

“I'm more of a moderate.” Mark said. “I believe in small government but also personal autonomy.”

“Mmm hmm. I've never been fond of politics.” Erin turned her nose up as she drank her second martini. “My father is a political scientist and I studied it in college as well. What does the Deputy Chief of Staff for the Senior Senator do?”

“Well, the truth of the matter is that he isn’t going to live forever. I don’t want to sound morbid but the time will come for the torch to be passed. His son has political ambitions; he's a good kid. But with the combination of my ambition and last name, my future is quite bright.”

“That’s very Mark Antony of you.”

“I have no plans to stab Caesar for his position. In the end, the people will select me.”

“Mark Antony didn’t stab Caesar; Brutus, Cassius, and the Liberators did.” Erin said. “Antony reaped the benefits in love and war.”

“Do you know who reaped more?” Mark asked, a slight grin on his face. “Caesar’s grandnephew, Octavian. He was named heir and later became…”

“Augustus Caesar.” They said in unison.

“That had its own different set of issues.” Erin said.

“Are they flirting?” Alex leaned and whispered to James, who was watching them go back and forth as if it were Wimbledon. “Are they flirting over the rise of the Roman Empire?”

“Mark never claimed to be normal.” He replied. “Your friend Erin is keeping him on his toes. I honestly haven’t seen many people do that. Would you like to attend an RNC dinner next Thursday?”

“Oh, the Academy keeps me pretty busy. They don’t encourage having much of a life outside of training and instruction. Luckily we only have another three months.”

“I understand.” James nodded. “I'm not that good at…whatever people call this. I don’t go on many dates. I just think it would be nice to see you again.”

“Really?” she hadn’t meant for that to come out the way that it did. 

Alex really looked at his face; she liked his face. There was something strong and sincere about James and she was an expert in faces. In college, Alex dated both men and women but never for very long. Academics came first. She knew she’d sacrificed a lot but the benefits were plentiful. 

“I can give you my number. Maybe we can have lunch sometime.” He pulled a ratty piece of paper from his jeans pocket. “My schedule is insane as well but we can try to meet up.”

“Yeah, we can definitely try.”

“His only mistake was marrying the wrong woman.” Erin plucked one of her olives from the martini glass and ate it. “Her thirst for power would eventually lead to the fall of everything Augustus built.”

“Wow, that’s a lot to put on Livia’s shoulders. She was power hungry, I grant you, but her only contribution to the fall was Tiberius.”

“Mark, she killed off all of his worthy competition acting as if the time would never come for him to die. He outlived his usefulness by many years.”

“So you subscribe to the Robert Graves school of Roman history?” he asked.

“I subscribe to the Roman history school of Roman history.” Erin replied. “I have a Master’s degree in History.”

“If I were more intoxicated I swear I would kiss your lips, Erin.”

“And I would slap your face.” She caressed his cheek. “I have a feeling you might like that.”

“You're probably right.” Mark nodded, which made Erin smile.

“Erin, it’s getting late.” Alex looked at her watch. “We should probably go soon. Getting at least a little reading done tonight would be ideal.”

“I'm not nearly tipsy enough. Let’s just have one more drink.” She looked at her best friend and put her hands together like she was praying. “Please. It won't help much but I think it'll be good for both of us.”

“Just one more.” She held up one finger.

Erin smiled and clapped. Her exuberance was infectious. Mark held up his hand to get the server’s attention. It looked like Round Three was on him as well.

***

“If you hadn’t been with me, I totally would’ve gone back to his place and fucked his brains out. I'm so glad you were there.”

“Language.” Alex laughed. “I think he and James are roommates anyway. That would’ve been awkward.”

“I sort of liked him. He had the ambitious, smug bastard thing going…and a good head of hair. I like that in a man.”

“You mean he was David Rossi without being David Rossi.”

“That is not what I meant!” Erin exclaimed.

“OK.” Alex gave her the OK sign with her fingers.

“Don’t say it like that.” Her best friend nudged her as they stopped at a red light. “Say it like you mean it.”

“I don’t mean it.” Alex shook her head. “That’s totally what you meant.”

The girls were walking home from the bar. It was just after eleven; plenty of time before the 1am Academy dormitory curfew. Rain was falling, steady but not in sheets. Unfortunately that was a normal occurrence this time of year. Alex carried a blue umbrella. She and Erin were under it together. It was a little tight but Erin put her arm in Alex’s and made it work.

“Is it that obvious?” she asked after a few minutes of silence. “I mean the David Rossi thing?”

“I know you better than a lot of people.”

“I don’t have a crush on him. Just because you appreciate a man’s physique and his head of hair and the way his lips move when he talks doesn’t mean you have a crush.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Alex shook her head.

“Anyway, it’s against the rules for cadets to fraternize with agents. Kirk would kill me if he even suspected. He’d definitely kill Rossi.”

“At the end of the day the only person you're beholden to is Erin.”

“Erin is going to do her damndest to stay out of trouble. Hey, I noticed James slipped you his number tonight. What's that about?”

“He asked me to go to that RNC dinner with him.”

“Oh my God, did you say yes?”

“Do we have to do this?” Alex sounded miserable when she asked.

“No pressure.” Erin held up her hand in surrender. “He was cute and he is a doctor. Even if it’s not a love match a little cock, or a lot of it, is a stress reliever. That’s science, Blake. . You can't argue with science”

“We have the same last name. That’s strange.”

“I think it’s adorable.”

“Did Mark ask you out?” Alex asked.

“Yes.” Erin nodded. “And I respectfully declined…I'm really busy being a cadet. I did tell him I usually go to Creepy’s on Tuesday nights though. How much do you want to bet I’ll be seeing him there soon?”

“You're evil.”

“You love me.”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

***


End file.
